HANS

Not everyone involved with MotorsportReg.com races, but everyone who does should wear a HANS device (head and neck restraint). While there are a handful of other systems out there, this is the most widely used and endorsed.

I recently had the distinction of becoming HANS' first dual HANS device crash while riding shotgun at Buttonwillow Raceway about a month ago. Both the driver and I were fine minus a bruised ego, a little stiffness and a totaled E36 BMW chassis. What this note is about, however, is surprising customer service. "Surprising" and "customer service" in the same sentence is rarely meant as a term of endearment but HANS has it nailed. When we wrote in to order new tethers (which stretch in an incident like racing harnesses to dissipate crash energy), our package included a "Thanks for saving my neck!" t-shirt, HANS hat and handwritten note alerting us to our celebrity status. None of this was expected and all of it was free.

HANS sells an expensive device; we would have gladly paid for the replacement parts but the intense interest in the customer and their wellbeing is what sets HANS apart. That is someone trying to do it better than it has been done before. I call it "surprising" and it's what we try to do every day.